Public Interest

CANBERRA, March 12 (Reuters) - Australia's Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced on Tuesday plans to revamp media laws, including a new public interest test on media mergers and acquisitions. But Conroy delayed a decision on changes to media diversity rules, which currently ban a television licence holder from reaching more than 75 percent of the national audience. He said the proposal would be referred to a parliamentary committee for ...

Tom Brejcha is nothing if not an optimist - a requisite, perhaps, for his line of work. On a recent morning in Cook County Circuit Court, a judge dismissed three counts from a lawsuit that claims Illinois' ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Brejcha and his public-interest law group, the Thomas More Society, were gunning for full dismissal of the lawsuit. The plaintiffs' attorneys say the two remaining counts are the main ones anyway, and...

LONDON -- U.K. news channel Sky News, which is run by News Corp.'s paybox BSkyB, admitted Thursday that it had hacked the emails of members of the public on two occasions, but insisted that its actions were "in the public interest." Sky News said that it had intercepting the emails of John Darwin, who faked his own death as part of an insurance fraud, and his wife Anne Darwin, as well as hacking into the email accounts of a suspected pedophile...

Weeks after a grisly double murder in Joliet, the online news site Patch.com began a jaw-dropping series of stories called "Nightmare on Hickory Street. " Among the details: Two of the four suspects - all of them now charged in the slayings - confessed to having sex on top of the victims' bodies. All four were high on pot and coke and kept partying after the murders. One of them wanted to keep the victims' teeth as trophies. Those allegations didn't come from public documents.

The recording of the 911 emergency call burbled out of the radio Tuesday: "Oh, my God! Scott!" shrieked Nicole Vagedes. "What's going on, honey?" said the emergency dispatcher. "The son and the girlfriend are beat up too," wailed Vagedes. She was walking Sunday morning through the rural Ohio farmhouse that contained the bodies of her stepbrother, Scott Moody, 18, and three others and was momentarily unaware that they were dead. "The son and the girlfriend?" ...

When Sunny Fischer was 4, her family moved into a new apartment with a shiny stove and easy access to green space and playgrounds. "The schools were great - I had terrific teachers," Fischer says. "There was a library within the development that I used to go to all the time. I can still remember the librarian's name - and this was a really long time ago. " When Fischer says that that's what public housing can be, it's tough to argue with her. The development where Fischer lived...

CANBERRA, March 12 (Reuters) - Australia's Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced on Tuesday plans to revamp media laws, including a new public interest test on media mergers and acquisitions. But Conroy delayed a decision on changes to media diversity rules, which currently ban a television licence holder from reaching more than 75 percent of the national audience. He said the proposal would be referred to a parliamentary committee for ...

Teaming up: CPAs for the Public Interest, which gives technical help to small non-profit groups, will merge with the Illinois CPA Society as of Monday. It will be governed by the CPA Society, but continue to be financially separate.

By Matt Scuffham LONDON, Jan 24 (Reuters) - Barclays was forced to name former heads Bob Diamond and John Varley, finance director Chris Lucas and other top executives and traders linked to a global rate-fixing probe, despite their calls for anonymity. A UK judge ordered the bank to reveal their identities on Thursday during a preliminary hearing for a British test case on the mis-selling of interest rate swaps brought by a residential care home...

In the May 5 editorial "Howard's revenge," protesting against the Federal Communications Commission's "censorship" of Howard Stern, it appears that the Chicago Tribune has donned the same mantle worn by the American Rifle Association. Not even the slightest infringement upon our constitutional rights, in this case the freedom of speech, is tolerated, no matter how reasonable or how much in the public's interest. We must rise up in opposition. What the Tribune is urging is that Stern should be entitled to spew...

(John Lloyd is a Reuters columnist but his opinions are his own.) By John Lloyd Jan 22 (Reuters) - A constant and frequent complaint about journalism is that it concentrates almost exclusively on what is happening now, and not the future. Why didn't journalists see the financial crash coming? Why didn't they know there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Why didn't they warn about Enron's house of cards? Why didn't they do more, in...

The May 14 story on public disinterest in major but complex news stories highlights the need for the four major networks to produce clear and concise "issue primers" to summarize the main aspects of hard-to-follow news stories. It is difficult, even for the most astute followers of current events, to follow a major story when small details appear sporadically over a long period of time, e.g., Iran-contra, S&Ls, etc. One quickly loses the big picture when trying to piece together the details.

In case you were confused, the health advocates at the Center for Science in the Public Interest on Wednesday made it clear: Ice cream contains lots of saturated fat and calories. Sometimes as much as a T-bone steak dinner, they say. You've been warned. ---------- Compiled from RedEye news services and edited by Lara Weber (lweber@tribune.com) and Michael Morgan (mnmorgan@tribune.com)

Ike Pappas has been a great reporter for a great many years for CBS-TV, and now he and 214 other people have lost their jobs in the latest wave of budget cutbacks at that network. That is unhappy news. But even unhappier news is the remedy suggested by U.S. Rep. Dennis Eckart (D., Ohio), who did a bit of grandstanding before the TV cameras in front of CBS headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., the other day. The broadcasting networks, Mr. Eckart suggested, should be licensed by...

Following are some nutritional materials available for parents and children: A Fast Food Eating Guide: A wall chart listing calories, fats, sodium and sugar content of most fast foods by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Send a check for $3.95 to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 1501 16th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20036. Creative Food Experiences for Children: Aimed at parents and teachers of 4- to 5-year-olds, the book provides activities to help children become...